Tuesday, December 20, 2005

An Objective Study Of Media Bias

Go ahead and read the whole thing, it is lengthy, but tells the story.

In this paper we estimate ADA (Americans for Democratic Action) scores for major media outlets such as the New York Times, USA Today, Fox News’ Special Report, and all three network television news shows.Our estimates allow us to answer such questions as “Is the average article in the New York Times more liberal than the average speech by Tom Daschle?” or “Is the average story on Fox News more conservative than the average speech by Bill Frist?”To compute our measure, we count the times that a media outlet cites various think tanks and other policy groups.We compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same think tanks in their speeches on the floor of the House and Senate.By comparing the citation patterns we construct an ADA score.As a simplified example, imagine that there were only two think tanks, one liberal and one conservative.Suppose that the New York Times cited the liberal think tank twice as often as the conservative one.Our method asks:What is the typical ADA score of members of Congress who exhibit the same frequency (2:1) in their speeches?This is the score that we would assign to the New York Times.Our results show a strong liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Consistent with many conservative critics, CBS Evening News and the New York Times received a score far left of center.Outlets such as the Washington Post, USA Today, NPR’s Morning Edition, NBC’s Nightly News and ABC’s World News Tonight were moderately left.The most centrist outlets (but still left-leaning) by our measure were the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN’s NewsNight with Aaron Brown, and ABC’s Good Morning America.Fox News’ Special Report, while right of center, was closer to the center than any of the three major networks’ evening news broadcasts.All of our findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets.That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample.

A Measure of Media Bias

“The editors in Los Angeles killed the story.They told Witcover that it didn’t ‘come off’ and that it was an ‘opinion’ story. …The solution was simple, they told him.All he had to do was get other people to make the same points and draw the same conclusions and then write the article in their words.”

That gives you the jist of the criteria that the study is based on.

This chart says it all.

Click on the chart to see it in all it's glory.

The average voter from '95-'99 is defined as center.

And how many news outlets report to the Right of center?

Two.

Fox News' Special Report With Brit Hume, and The Washington Times.

And the other 18, including Drudge, fall Left of Center.

I have to ask myself...

How is it possible that GW Bush can even function when there is that much media against him?

And no wonder we don't hear about the nuclear potential in Iran, or the progress in Iraq, our media is intent on pushing the Left agenda.

Please note that this report was completed one year ago this month.

If you watch the News, you will see Nancy Pelosi given tons of face time, you'd think she was the Speaker of the House.

But she's not, Dennis Hastert is, and how often do you see him?

What does this tell us?

One, the MSM is totally out of touch with the American Voter, and getting further out of touch.

And two, us Bloggers are truly the fu2r of media in The United States.